The term has become so overused and misapplied. In fact, many companies I speak with often believe they have not actually done content marketing unless they have put up a blog or generated a following in social media.

Then there are those marketers who have pushed forward with creating so much horrible, boring, inconsequential and uninformative content – simply to generate clicks or to sell ads – that they saturated the Internet, abused the concept and turned people off.

So, let’s be clear: Content is critical to marketing.

The biggest challenges facing you as a marketing, communications or public relations professional are:

Laziness

Not understanding who your customers are as people

Cost constraints and

Risk avoidance.

How do you avoid these pitfalls?

Ask A LOT of questions!

As professionals we need always ask questions such as: What do people like? What keeps them up at night? What makes them laugh, cringe, cry, pick up the phone, share, respond and act.

And we have to ask questions about each piece of content we are going to produce. Why are we doing this? What are our goals? Is this content valuable? If so, to whom? And why?

To me asking questions is the necessary building block to the story you really want to tell.

Content marketing isn’t going away and is not waning. But in when you enter a world that is filled with so many boring articles, deceptive headlines and uninformative insights, you need to work that much harder and force yourself to ask and understand what people want more than ever before.

In short, the only way to make your content marketing as effective as it can be is to have the best possible connection to the people you are trying to reach.